17. Missing Armageddon
The assembly building was like a huge aircraft hangar. Three long road trailers were assembled at a time, each laid out on a concrete floor red with rusty dust, and built up by the crews assisted by the wailing overhead cranes—the gantries—one of which attended each assembly area.
It was a frightful place where every sense was under continuous attack; everything you touched was filthy and secluded sharp metal splinters; the nose and throat stifled at dirt and grime befogging the oppressive air, the eardrums were constantly assailed by the chilling wail of the gantries and the deafening metallic thunderstorm of steel clashing with steel and the eyes flinched and squinted at the lightning of the ceaseless evil showers of sparks from the oxy-welders. It was hell on earth; a place where humanity had given way completely to the thudding, ruthless power of machines.
So the manhunt had started, and it grew more savage as it went on, In 1830 Tasmania was put under martial law, a line of armed beaters was formed across the island, and an attempt was made to drive the aborigines into a cul-de-sac. They succeeded in slipping through the net of course, but by now the heart had gone out of the tribe, and their terror was greater than their desperation… In 1835 the last survivors, only a couple of hundred of the original 5000, were shipped away… Within seven years they were down to fifty. The last pure-blood Tasmanian died in 1876…
Alan Moorehead, Australian popular historian, wrote his most compelling book with The Fatal Impact—the manner in which colonials annihilated the populations of the Pacific Islands (including Australia)—partly by intent, otherwise accidentally through disease. Essential reading at the time, on a subject that everyone desperately wanted to ignore.
